The present invention relates to balancing jackets for divers.
More specifically, the invention relates to jackets provided with a corrugated pipe, one end of which is connected with the inner inflatable bag of the jacket through a connection body, while the other end is free and provided with means for the air feeding to the jacket, and the jacket communicates with an air valve which is housed in said connection body and whose valve element is kept in the closed position through elastic means and/or the pneumatic pressure within the jacket, while it is connected to a driving cable projecting inside the corrugated pipe and fastened to the free end of the same, the whole so that, extending, at least partially, the corrugated pipe by pulling the free end of the same, the air valve valve element is moved by means of the driving cable to an opened position, to exhaust air out of the jacket. A balancing jacket of this kind is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,559.
The purpose of the invention is to improve the security of the balancing jackets of the present type, eliminating the danger of an eventual opening impossibility of the air valve by pulling the corrugated pipe, because of a defect, for example an unhooking from the corrugated pipe or the air valve valve element, or a break of the driving cable housed in the corrugated pipe. The invention aims to solve this problem with simple, safe, non-bulky and inexpensive means, reducing at the same time also the cost of a conventional air exhaust device.
The problem is solved by the fact that the air valve valve element itself is connected to auxiliary driving means manually controlled by the diver wearing the jacket independently from the corrugated pipe and from the outer side of the same.
In this way, according to the invention, in case of a break or defect of the driving cable provided within the corrugated pipe and controlled by pulling this pipe, the air valve, normally openable through the corrugated pipe and its inner cable, can be opened through the auxiliary driving means, manually accessible by the diver separately from the corrugated pipe itself. At the same time the invention allows reduction of the security requirements presented till now by the driving cable housed inside the corrugated pipe, and allows one to use less expensive cables than the stainless steel ones with their end eyelets, normally used until now for sake of security. According to the invention, a driving cable housed inside the corrugated pipe can be made of a plastic material, and for example made by two or more threads to reduce the danger of a break, and in particular a plastic molded cable, preferably including two or more parallel threads.
The auxiliary driving means of the air valve valve element with the control outside the corrugated pipe and separated from the same, can be constructively realised in several ways. So, for instance, in a preferred embodiment, the air valve valve element can have a driving extension which is led to the outside by the connection body and is accessible and movable directly or indirectly (for example by means of a control cord on the outside of the jacket) by the diver wearing the jacket, so to move (for example to incline or axially move) the air valve valve element into opened position. According to another embodiment of the invention, the air valve valve element is movable, axially in particular, to the opened position by means of a pushing element, which can be controlled directly by the diver by means of a button control element, or indirectly, for example by means of a control cord out of the jacket and connected to the control button or directly to the pushing element.